1.No one knows what "STAMPS" is.

It's the name of the art school, fyi, not just a rubber art implement. We may be small, but we are fierce! We'd say hear us roar, but we have homework. At STAMPS. Where we go to school.

2.Your first year is not your call.

There are no choices when it comes to those first two semesters. The studios are mandatory, and so are the lectures. You might as well not even bother to try to schedule your days, especially if you had a late orientation.

3.The media center down the hall becomes your best friend.

You can count on them to always have those heavily caffeinated drinks to keep you awake for those 8:30 classes (even if it is a little pricey).

4.The Architects might as well be mythological.

You constantly forget that there are, in fact, architects that inhabit the school as well. Did you know they live in the attic? Well... the third floor, to be exact. It's said that they only come out to eat and drink the blood of the innocents (only joking) (maybe).

5.Thursday nights? Sorry. We're busy.

Thursday nights are never free. It's not just this semester either. It's forever. The Penny Stamps Lecture Series is required for us to attend every Thursday of every week of every semester of every year. So... maybe we can plan something after we graduate?

6.Joann is either your best friend, or your worst enemy.

Don't get on her bad side. Just..... don't.

7.The workload is so much more than anyone knows.

^A fancy way of saying that you will work more than triple the amount of hours in class. It's been said that we have more homework than anyone but the engineers.

8.400 printing pages is nowhere near enough.

Seriously? Only 400? The engineers get 800. We have to print so many iterations of our work, and often use tabloid, which counts as nearly 4 regular 8.5x11 pages. Plus mprint is a major pain.

9.This school is a labyrinth.

It's not even the David Bowie kind. Sure, we may have glitter and a preference for crazy ideas, but if you don't know your way around, you may be lost forever.

10.We know our way around a power tool.

We have access to all the tools you can imagine, and we know how to use them.

11.The ever looming IP project.

If you are planning on getting a BFA, you are probably already worrying about your final project in your senior year. The IP project is a huge deal and causes everyone a whole lot of stress. Try not to pull all of your hair out.

12.First year guinea pig classes are the worst.

As a first year in STAMPS, we learned that the curriculum is constantly changing, and that the teachers have never taught some of these classes. One thing is for sure, we all HATE "Intersections."

13.We feel like we are in solitary confinement.

Don't get us wrong, North Campus is beautiful, but it's also really far away from the rest of the schools! The isolation can get to our heads sometimes...

14.The lockers are extremely small.

The teeny, tiny storage space is not nearly big enough to hold our art supplies. Measuring about 1x1x2.5 feet, it's impossible to fit more than one toolbox inside.

15.Night classes = no social life.

If you have had the displeasure of having a 6-9 or 7-10 class, you know that you won't be eating dinner in a dining hall, since they close at nine. This is when vending machines are a life saver.

16.We hate when people think art school is easy.

"Art school? Man you have it easy." "Art school? You are so lucky you don't have exams!" "Art school? Wow you are so fortunate that you don't have to write any papers."

(All of these claims are false, by the way).

17.Documentation of work is time consuming.

Scott C. Soderberg / UM Photography, S. Soderberg

We barely have time to do homework, and then we have to take pictures of our homework on top of that. It's a lot of work and takes up a lot of time we could be using to do other homework.

18.The cost doesn't stop at tuition.

The teachers often want us to buy more art supplies than just the art kits (which we also have to buy). There is the $2000 dollar computer, $200 subscription to adobe creative cloud, $100 license for rhino, the $300 for final cut pro, and multiple other craft expenses. We are the brokest of the broke students.